Michael Cox

Wood chips for the deep litter on the floor. We get them free from a local tree surgeon. More than we can ever use.

Clean pine shavings for the nest boxes. About once every two weeks I replace the shavings. I just scoop them out onto the floor and put fresh in. They get incorporated into the deep litter with 24 hours and you can notice them.

I love the deep litter. It is completely forgiving of a bit of benign neglect. If i have a busy week or so you wouldn't notice because the chickens are forever turning the top layer over. The only time it wasn't so effective was when I just had a small number of birds in the large coop. They were crapping from their roost bars but not doing enough digging and scratching to consistently turn the top layer over before it dried together in a cake.

I have replenished my flock recently and all is operating smoothly again.

Well rotted deep litter has been fantastic for the garden, particularly the rhubarb plants as a thick winter mulch.

Juniper Zen wrote:

Josh Hoffman wrote:This chicken you are referring to ate too much grass? In a coop or tractored or free range?

My chicken passed away today, and a necropsy showed that the underlying problem was that her gizzard was full of tumors. But while I was researching impacted crops, I came across stories of other people's chickens having eaten too much long grass and it getting twisted up and stuck in the crop. Obviously that doesn't usually happen, but I just wanted to let readers know about the possible risk so that they can watch out for it and intervene if they see a problem.

This happened to one of my birds a couple of years ago. Identified by necropsy. She got into some grass clippings.

I have had some good use for it in my work as a teacher. Not teaching itself, but in the peripheral admin tasks.

I write lots of school reports. Some of those go home to families where english is not their first language. I use the prompt "Rewrite this school report using similified language for a reader whose first language is not English". It usually does a brilliant job.

Similarly, I recently had to write a short statement for why I would be suitable for a particular role. I wrote it in the 3rd person "He has worked for the past 20 years doing..." but got feedback that it would be better in the 1st person "I have worked for the past..."

I used the prompt "Please rewrite this in the first person". Again, it did it perfectly in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to go through it meticulously line by line.

Short version - use it for what it is good at, which is language. Don't use it for "knowledge and understanding" which it is confidently bad at.

Very nice setup :D

I have heard, but am no expert, that including some "grog" in the mix helps prevent cracking. Grog is just fired clay that is then crushed and mixed in.

You appear to be using this dry, but not fired.

I wonder if it might be possible to make an rocket stove like this that were actually fired to pottery temperatures? If you could make it work it would be more weather proof maybe?

We have loads of wild blackberry patches near us. For the past few years I have been going out in spring and trimming back the canes to encourage both better fruit setting, and to make it easier to pick.

Wild blackberries send up huge, long thick stems. The following year the side branches on these bear the fruit. If the long stems are trimmed back to about 3ft high, the fruiting side branches will be easily accessible and the fruit set heavier. It also makes it easier to do later winter pruning. 15 minutes with secateurs now, on a wild blackberry patch, can make a big difference later.

I do this long boundary fence lines in particular, where they grow against walls, and along field boundaries.

I missed a few comments here! Glad you enjoyed era 2. I really liked them, but the tone is very different from Era 1. Steris is brilliant.

Re the newspapers - there are some tiny titbits in there if you are observant, and have some awareness of wider cosmere lore. Not essential to the main story line.

I also anticipated the ending, although not the actual detail, but felt like it really did do justice to the characters' overall story.

Megan Palmer wrote:@tereza when you eventually manage to get your scarlet runners to grow, leave the plants in the ground, they are perennials and will come back again.

I've tried this here in the UK with no success. Once I tried heavy mulch in situ - no joy, they seemed to rot in the soil. A second time I lifted them once they had died back and stored them in the cold and dry, wrapped in newspaper. No joy there either.

I'm sticking with seeds until someone comes up with a hardy variety selected for overwintering potential.

I think this is climate specific - when I have mulched heavily with either woodchips or chop and drop I have had slug plagues. Our climate is damp and it just sets up for a slug explosion.  I'm trying to be more discerning now. In some situations it works brilliantly for me, like comfry around fruit trees, but around more tender/vulnerable plants or seedlings it is bad news.

Yes, absolutely. I'm a teacher. I could pick up online tutoring at somewhere between £40 and £80 per hour, which I could do from a comfortable heated office. I could easily pay for all my food just with a few extra hours of that - far fewer hours than growing it myself, and much less effort.

I don't grow food because of the time; I grow food because I like the process or gardening, like spending time outside and moving and away from my desk, and like bringing fresh produce in to cook immediately for dinner.

Could I set up more efficient "lazy" systems? Maybe. But getting to that point would require a bigger upfront investment of effort/materials etc... instead I'lljust keep plodding making incremental changes.